O V E R V I E W
"Gathering 300+ manuscripts representing 237 poems marked by the presence of birds and 300+ sound and sonogram files of associated calls and songs, Dickinson's Birds combines elements of the documentary archive, the scholarly edition, and the environmental installation to invite new questions at the intersection of poetics, ecology, and ethics.
Conceived in a moment when the work of mourning for a planet suffering profoundly from the effects of climate change, loss of biodiversity, and environmental degradation often feels overwhelming, Dickinson's Birds prepares a space, we hope, for reflection on the myriad ways in which birds and birdsong remain at the heart of the intricate and fragile ecological meshwork that is our common and only home."
– Dickinson's Birds: A Listening Project ("About")
P R O J E C T T Y P E :
Digital archive / public humanities
T E A M :
Marta Werner (PI), Caroline McCraw (product designer + manager), Abe Kim (programmer), & Danielle Richards (researcher)
R O L E :
UX/UI Designer, Technical Manager
T I M E L I N E :
2019 – present
A U D I E N C E :
+ Scholars (of textual studies, Emily Dickinson, Anthropocene studies, digital humanities)
+ Biological researchers
+ Citizen scientists & birders
+ Climate change activists
+ Poets & artists
+ Educators
+ Amherst residents
+ Anyone curious about Dickinson or birds!
I N T E R V E N T I O N S :
+ Process As Product: By maintaining a live website and sharing materials on GitHub, we embrace the iterative nature of digital publication and strive to maintain a stable and accessible project throughout its production.
+ Creation in the Face of Extinction: In order to create a project about climate change and extinction, it is necessary to recognize the limits of a digital project's own lifespan. Inspired by the tools and thinking put forth by the Endings Project, we have conceived of this project as finite from the very beginning, and make conceptual and technical choices accordingly.
+ The Validity of Digital Publication: This project manifests the belief that digital publications are just as valuable as printed monographs within academia. By producing a network of collaborations and publications, we hope to expand the meaning and recognition of digital scholarly work.
D E S I G N G O A L S :
"In this era of information abundance, scholars can no longer afford to be indifferent to audiences or to refuse style."
//
Dickinson's Birds is committed to accessible and inviting UX design. In addition to following W3C digital accessibility guidelines, this project believes in the radical power of style and aesthetics in creating digital environments that are hospitable and accessible to a wide range of users.
Dickinson's Birds seeks to convey new ways of experiencing information: data as poetry, birdsongs as text, poems as data. This project seeks to expand our understanding of a text to include the written and unwritten, the human and non-human. We endorse a poetics of reading, listening, and embodying.
The design of this project prioritizes simplicity and clarity, providing users with multiple invitations and entry points into the data.
T O O L S :
Project Management: Basecamp, Google Sheets, Google Docs
Wireframes: Google Slides (for maximum team member accessibility)
Documentation: GitHub, Notion
UI Design: Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator
Programming: Custom databases completed with Laravel (PHP+CSS), advanced search options implemented from Algolia
